A couple are divorcing after a woman found her was husband cheating – with a virtual character in an online world.

Amy Taylor caught estranged husband David Pollard having sex with an animated woman in Second Life. 'I went mad – I was so hurt. I just couldn't believe what he'd done,' said Ms Taylor, 28. 'I looked at the screen and saw his character having sex. It's cheating, as far as I'm concerned.'

The couple met online in 2003 and, within months, she had moved into 40-year-old Mr Pollard's flat in Newquay, Cornwall.

They spent hours together on Second Life, where players create fantasy lives, with jobs and relationships.

After two years, the pair married – in real life and in the game – but Ms Taylor said she knew something was wrong.

'I had my susp­icions about what he was doing in Second Life,' she added.

In February last year, she caught her husband's avatar, Dave Barmy, having sex with a call girl in the game.

There's money in almost any service in Second Life, just often not very much. The article doesn't say whether it was a Second Life detective or a generic cyber-stalker for hire, of whom I've encountered a few, who run the gamut from freelance googler to full-blown private investigation, plus internet profiling.